1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to switching power regulator circuits, and more specifically, to a cascaded switching power converter in which an auxiliary winding power supply is provided with energy from a final power converter stage by operating the switching power converter in a low energy transfer mode.
2. Background of the Invention
In order to supply power to control circuits of a line-powered switching power converter, a low voltage power supply is needed, typically between 3V and 12V at a few milliamperes of current. However, until the power converter is operating, the only source typically available is the AC power line. The high voltage of the AC power line makes it impractical to use resistors to drop the voltage to the required voltage for the controller, as the power dissipation in the resistor will typically be on the order of several Watts.
Therefore, an auxiliary winding provided on one of the converter magnetics is frequently used to supply power to the converter controller integrated circuit (IC), since a lower voltage can be generated through use of the auxiliary winding, therefore reducing wasted power. The auxiliary power supply could be operated from the first stage, but in an AC line-powered cascaded converter, the first stage has inductor/transformer currents that vary with the input voltage. In cascaded converters in which the first stage is a power factor corrector (PFC), the input current will vary directly with the input voltage. In other cascaded converters in which the line input is rectified and filtered, unless the filter has a low ripple under all loading conditions, and therefore is quite large, there will still be substantial AC variation on the input at high load conditions. Therefore, it is desirable in such applications, to place the auxiliary winding on one of the magnetic components in the second stage. In a cascaded power converter, the second stage is generally not activated until the output voltage of the first stage has reached a level that ensures the second stage will operate properly. Therefore, the resistor drop power supply configuration, generally with a Zener diode to regulate the output voltage, is generally used at least until the second stage is started, lowering overall efficiency and raising the level of heat generated by the power supply.
A second stage auxiliary power supply provided from a DC-DC converter stage that receives its input from a first stage PFC still has an output voltage that varies with the intermediate node voltage at the input of the DC-DC converter, which varies with the magnitude of the AC power line voltage provided at the input to the PFC. In order to ensure that there is sufficient voltage available to operate the controller IC under all input line conditions, the maximum auxiliary power supply output voltage will typically be much higher than the minimum required output voltage. Therefore, the IC must either be designed to handle the full range of power supply voltages that may be provided from the auxiliary winding or the voltage must be regulated, e.g., with a Zener diode circuit, wasting power, dissipating heat, and typically reducing reliability.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a cascaded power converter that can supply internal controller circuits with an auxiliary power supply operated from the second (or later) stage of the cascaded power converter. It would further be desirable to provide such an auxiliary power supply that can operate from a widely varying auxiliary winding voltage, without requiring a Zener diode or another lossy regulation technique.